Using data from the 1993 Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine housework-related service consumption, the author finds that spending on housekeeping services and meals out—which helps relieve women's housework burden—is affected by dynamics within marriages as well as by family class and race-ethnicity. Other things equal, families in which women have more relative power, as reflected in their income and occupational status, consume more housekeeping services and spend more of their food dollars on meals out, as do wealthier families and white (...) families. Along with housework itself, which is well studied, these results suggest that housework service consumption is also an arena for gendered negotiation and conflict within families, and one way that gender relations vary by class and race-ethnicity. (shrink)

This article explores the effect of women’s movement into the labor market on the gender segregation of work, using the Current Population Survey from 1972 to 1993. The author includes as working those respondents who were “keeping house” and codes keeping house as an occupation. The results show higher estimates of gender segregation, and slightly steeper declines over time, than were seen in previous studies. Analysis of one-year longitudinal changes reveals less movement out of female-dominated occupations when keeping house is (...) included as an occupation. Finally, a decomposition of the segregation trend shows that the movement of women away from keeping house contributed as much to the overall decline in gender segregation as did the desegregation of paid occupations. The author concludes that the movement of women’s work from the household to the labor market has been a driving force in the changing nature of gender inequality. (shrink)